Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
3.5 stars!
To be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure what I was expecting when I picked up Another Little Piece. I mean… the first lines of the summary say “The spine-tingling horror of Stephen King meets an eerie mystery worthy of Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars series…”
That alone had me dying to get my hands on this – though admittedly I’ve never read the Pretty Little Liar’s books, but I’ve read my share of Stephen King!
I was instantly intrigued by the plot of the story… and when I found myself trying to explain just what this book was about I struggled a bit. Not because it’s hard to explain, but simply because I found myself unsure what would be giving something important away.
The story first opens with Annaliese wandering down a road hundreds of miles away from her home. She has no idea who she is and she doesn’t know how she got there. It turns out a year earlier she was at a local party, and stumbled out of the woods covered in blood, screaming. Since then, she had been missing.
Her parents hadn’t given up hope though, and upon her return her mother practically smothers her trying to get her to remember the life she used to have.
The telling of the actual story was a bit confusing. Mainly because there is a lot of jumping around in perspectives and times and I oftentimes found myself having to take a few paragraphs to figure out where exactly in the timeline something was happening and who exactly we were dealing with.
Something to also keep in mind is that there are paranormal elements to this story. I don’t think I’m ruining anything by telling you that the ‘Annaliese’ that returns is not the real Annaliese that went missing a year prior.
Ultimately the big question this book raises is if you had the opportunity to get anything you wished for, what exactly would you give up or sacrifice and if you didn’t know what the price for that desire would be, would you still do it? Snippets of the real Annaliese’s poems are scattered throughout the story to give you an idea of her thoughts back before everything happened to help show you maybe why she made the decision she did.
Of course there is also a bit of romance for our ‘Annaliese’ but I’m not sure ultimately how I feel about calling it romance or whatever. LOL There are essentially three different boys in this story, but only one of them is someone she’s truly interested in… you’ll understand that a bit better once you read this!
It took me a bit longer than usual to read this book, and I have to put the blame on how confusing it was to read. Like I said above, it was frustrating to have to reassess who, what, where at the start of every break. Since we’re not only dealing with Annalieses story, but also several
What I found interesting and really well done though, was ‘Annaliese’s’ relationship with her parents… mainly her mother. Throughout you get the idea that she wasn’t incredibly close to either of them prior to her disappearance, and even now that she’s back she struggles and it was a genius move on the author’s part to have her refer to them as ‘the parents’ or ‘the mom’ or ‘the dad’ never personalizing her relationship with them. I think it was a really smart move because it really separated her from the true Annaliese for the reader.
The pacing throughout this story was really well done as well. The story slowly unfolds and keeps you turning pages just to find out more… it was never rushed or too slow and I really appreciated that.
I think that if you’re looking for a very different kind of book, something that has the elements you would find in a good horror book, combined with some paranormal and a teeny tiny bit of romance you will definitely enjoy reading Another Little Piece.
Did I love it? No, but I definitely think that the story was really well told for what it was. Admittedly I’ve only just started dipping my toe into the ‘horror/thriller’ genre so please keep that in mind when you pick this one up! It could definitely be something you absolutely love.
Thank you to Harper Collins & Edelweiss for the Advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
Recent Comments